And no, it wasn't my PC or connection, I was talking to a friend in another country on raidcall throughout.

Based upon the evidence, I think today was a hiccup somewhere between you and the server. Not the server, but not your end either. If you had to force your character out to relog, that by definition means the server did not go down, cause your ghost was still on it. I had a similar hiccup myself, super lag then d/c. But in this instance, I don't believe it was PWE's fault.

Besides, it cleared up too quickly to be PWE's fault. We all know PWE problems take way longer than necessary to be fixed.